It was June 6, 1822, on Mackinac (Big Turtle) Island, in Lake Huron. 18-year old Alexis St. Martin was working at a fur trading depot, when an accidental musket shot tore a hole through his ribs and stomach, exposing his viscera. Several ribs were broken, his lungs and diaphragm were damaged, and a hole was torn into his actual stomach. William Beaumont, MD was summoned from nearby Fort Mackinac and attended to the boy’s wounds.

It was a serious case. Though the lad was stabilized – bleeding stopped and no signs of infection – there was a very practical problem with digestion: the food he ate came out of the hole in his side. For weeks, he could obtain no nutrition from anything ate, forcing the doctor to give him nutritive enemas in order to sustain life.

In time, the addition of straps allowed the fistula to heal and digestion returned to as normal a state as could be expected. However, the hole though his abdomen and into his stomach never closed fully. In fact, the walls of the stomach fused with the exterior skin, creating a permanent window into Alexis’ digestive system.

At the time, almost nothing was known of digestion. Food went in, waste came out, and somehow in the middle nutrients were extracted. Dr. Beaumont saw an opportunity. In what would certainly be considered an ethical violation in modern times, Beaumont got Alexis to agree to be his servant. His role would include chopping wood, fetching bundles, and allowing Dr. Beaumont to experiment on him in rather unique ways.

The doctor was a man of science, and lost no opportunity to learn as much as he could. He tied bits of string to food, and lowered into the hole in Alexis’ side. After a time, he would pull the food back out and observe its condition. Some food was left in longer or given longer pieces of string. Much probing and measurement occurred, not only with fingers and instruments, but also with the Dr.’s tongue. He would taste the wound to determine it’s “sourness” and thus it’s alkalinity, with a more sour taste indicating a lower pH and higher acid content.

Beaumont would take copious notes, and reflect upon his observations. While they may seem quaint to us now (Beaumont wondered how food was separated into different components, and why animal blood was digested as all, as it should have just been transported to the arteries whole by his logic), his writings formed the basis for all we know about digestion today. Thanks to the wonders of Google, his magnum opus, Experiments and Observations of the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion is available online in full.

In a strange twist of fate, the damaged Alexis St. Martin outlived the doctor by 10 years, finally succumbing not from his wounds, but from old age at 78 years. The good doctor only lived to be 68, having died from a fall on icy stairs. We owe both men a debt of gratitude for furthering modern science. As a side note, similar experiments continue. It is fairly commonplace for such windows to placed in cows to observe the process of rumination, as can be seen in this YouTube video.

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